San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association News from SF Public Presshttp://sfpublicpress.org/taxonomy/term/519/all
The Mission of The Public Press is to enrich the civic life of San Francisco by delivering public interest journalism to broad and diverse audiences, through print and interactive media not supported by advertising.enSeeking San Francisco Affordable Housing Solutions, 20 Seconds at a Timehttp://sfpublicpress.org/news/2014-05/seeking-san-francisco-affordable-housing-solutions-20-seconds-at-a-time
<p><strong><em>Part of a <a href="http://sfpublicpress.org/housingsolutions">special report on solutions for housing affordability</a> in San Francisco. A version of this story ran in the summer 2014 print edition.</em></strong></p>
<p>The scene on the second floor at <a href="http://spur.org">SPUR</a> in San Francisco Tuesday evening could well have been a metaphor for the crowding now besetting the city: A standing-room-only mob overflowing into the adjacent lobby where late-commers struggled to see slide presentations offering new ideas to solve the dire lack of affordable housing.</p>
<p>SPUR, a Bay Area urban policy think tank, teamed up with <a href="http://pechakucha.org">Pecha Kucha</a>, an organization specializing in snappy presentations on innovation and new ideas, to host a slew of housing experts who each sped through 20 slides lasting 20 seconds apiece. Not all of their ideas were entirely new, but some of the presenters fleshed out concepts that have been floating around San Francisco political and development circles:</p>
<h2>1. MIX IT UP</h2>
<p>David Baker and Amanda Loper of <a href="http://www.dbarchitect.com/">David Baker Architects</a> said the city could increase density in certain neighborhoods without disrupting local character, by building high-density mixed-use buildings scattered across the city — what they called a “gap-tooth principle.”</p>
<h2>2. REVAMP PUBLIC HOUSING</h2>
<p>Tomiquia Moss, who represented the city housing agency <a href="http://hope-sf.org/">Hope SF</a>, discussed the importance of improving public housing projects without displacing residents. Hope SF is currently renovating and adding units to the Hunters View development, with plans to do the same with other public housing developments in the city, including Potrero Terrace and Sunnydale.</p>
<h2>3. SUBSIDIZE CITY LIVING</h2>
<p>Fernando Martí, co-director of the <a href="http://www.sfccho.org/">Council of Community Housing Organizations</a>, said San Francisco should build more subsidized housing for people who cannot afford the market rate. Though the city has built or planned more than twice the amount of market-rate housing that the Association of Bay Area Governments’ master plan recommends, San Francisco has under-produced housing for low- to moderate-income residents. Martí said other Bay Area cities should be part of the solution, too: If cities in Silicon Valley built more homes, then fewer tech workers would choose to live in San Francisco, which would in turn drop the city’s housing prices. Right now, the abundance of high salaries in the tech sector are contributing to gentrification in San Francisco, he said, pushing lower-income residents to cities on the Bay Area’s periphery.</p>
<h2>4. COHABITATE</h2>
<p>Ben Provan, a co-founder of <a href="http://opendoor.io/">Open Door Development Group</a>, said that shared housing could increase density while providing residents with an affordable housing option. He cited the growing popularity of business models that rely on the sharing economy, and proposed that cities do the same with housing.</p>
<h2>5. TALK OUT DIFFERENCES</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.chriscolin.com/">Chris Colin</a>, co-author of “What to Talk About,” urged more constructive dialogue in the often vitriolic debates surrounding the housing crisis. He made a plea for fewer abstract political arguments, and said it was important to find common ground by talking about specifics.</p>
<h2>6. HELP HOMELESS KIDS</h2>
<p>Ellen Burke, a board member of the nonprofit <a href="http://www.homeaway.org/">Home Away From Homelessness</a>, talked about the 2,200 homeless children in San Francisco, and how her organization was trying to help them by providing academic and recreational spaces.</p>
<h2>7. LIVE WITH GRANDMA</h2>
<p>Brandon Baunach, an architect at <a href="http://www.bararch.com/">BAR Architects</a>, discussed the benefits of multigenerational housing models that promote sharing space with family members, such as elderly parents or grown children. Baunach said he was in the process of developing floor plans for what he called a “flex unit,” a space-saving design in which a single condo is reconfigured into multiple units including some shared amenities.</p>
http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2014-05/seeking-san-francisco-affordable-housing-solutions-20-seconds-at-a-time#commentsHousingEconomySan FranciscoPecha KuchaPechaKuchaSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research AssociationSPURThu, 08 May 2014 02:49:39 +00001889 at http://sfpublicpress.orgCori BrosnahanHarry GibbonsQ&A: Bay Area Needs to Organize to Fight Sea-Level Rise, SPUR Researcher Sayshttp://sfpublicpress.org/news/2014-03/q-a-bay-area-needs-to-organize-to-fight-sea-level-rise-says-spur-researcher
<p><i>Laura Tam, who has done environmental sustainability research at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association for six years, says climate change adaptation planning is one of her most important responsibilities. She helped shape the Bay Plan, a controversial policy that answered complaints about guidance recommending restrictions on bay-front development issued by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission in 2010. The following year, she published “Climate Change Hits Home,” listing the ways the Bay Area could be more prepared for changes in weather, freshwater supply and sea-level rise.</i></p>
<p><i>The following is an edited transcript of our interview with her.</i></p>
<p><b>Public Press: What are some of the sea-level-rise planning projects now in the works?</b></p>
<p><b>Laura Tam:</b> A few years ago, a chunk of Ocean Beach fell into the sea. It restarted the dialogue on what has been going somewhat unsuccessfully for many years, around what should be done to prepare the western shore of San Francisco for erosion and sea-level-rise events. There are a huge number of federal, state and local agencies that have jurisdiction there. And there’s a lot of recreational use, a lot of infrastructure and endangered species. So we did a master plan for that. We’re working on two implementation studies right now, one on coastal management, one on transportation and circulation.&nbsp;</p>
<p><b>Many levels of government are involved in sea-level-rise planning, but how are local governments responding to the most up-to-date models and predictions?</b></p>
<p>My sense is that local governments aren’t necessarily doing a lot on their own, but they’ve demonstrated a lot of willingness to be engaged and to recognize the issue. And that’s a lot better than we were five years ago.</p>
<p>State and regional agencies are doing some of the thought leadership here, in terms of understanding sea-level rise in the Bay Area. There’s a whole spate of studies that the state has funded on Bay Area vulnerability. I think they published 10 of them in 2012.</p>
<p><b>Whose responsibility is it to plan for sea-level rise in the Bay Area?</b></p>
<p>It’s nobody’s job to plan for sea-level rise, really. Agencies for which sea-level rise is a big concern generally pay attention to the issue of climate change. And the Joint Policy Committee is a group of concerned people who would like to help prepare guidance and recommendations for what local planners can do. They have done a bunch of county-by-county policy dialogues to bring together local stakeholders, to raise awareness and to understand the state of planning at the county or sub-regional level.</p>
<p>I think those things are really important because you can’t just come down and issue some kind of regional policy if you haven’t prepared local government and actually used their input to create such a plan. Then you get what the Bay Conservation and Development Commission experienced in 2009 and 2010, which is all this furor over the idea of planning for climate change — when really the idea was to be helpful.</p>
<p><b>What exactly is the plan for the Bay Area for sea-level rise?</b></p>
<p>There isn’t one plan for sea-level rise. There are a lot of different groups and, in their areas of responsibility, there’s been a lot of work to recognize the potential future effects of sea-level rise. And the Bay Conservation and Development Commission uses their new sea-level-rise amendment when considering whether to approve or not to approve a project. Before, there was no requirement or guidance for the commission to consider sea-level rise. The amendment gave the commission the power to ask those questions and to be protective of the shoreline area.&nbsp;</p>
<p><b>How do resources available to cities and counties in the Bay Area affect their ability to plan and prepare for sea-level rise?</b></p>
<p>Now, we’re not experiencing the recession we were two years ago, at least in San Francisco. At the time, people were less receptive to the idea of planning for climate change, and it was not perceived to be as urgent of an issue. It actually gave people who are planners a little bit of time to be thoughtful about what guidance they would recommend. But I don’t think there are any cities or counties in the area that have adopted some kind of climate change sea-level-rise policy.</p>
<p><b>What is the most important thing the Bay Area should do to prepare for sea-level rise that is not being done right now?</b></p>
<p>There are a couple of really exciting pilot projects that look at vulnerabilities and do in-depth assessments, and try to cobble together adaptation strategies. And those are really raising awareness of sea-level-rise planning.</p>
<p>Are there any forward-thinking projects under way, then?</p>
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<p><b>Further reading:</b></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR): <a href="http://www.spur.org"><b>www.spur.org</b></a></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">Bay Conservation and Development Commission: <a href="http://www.bcdc.ca.gov"><b>www.bcdc.ca.gov</b></a></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">Plan Bay Area: <a href="http://onebayarea.org"><b>onebayarea.org</b></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>See also:</strong></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">Climate One at the Commonwealth Club of California hosted a panel discussion on sea level rise in early March. Tam urged regional planners to prepare aggressively for the encroachment of San Francisco Bay on communities across the region.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oGlPH7t9xgY" width="475"></iframe></p>http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2014-03/q-a-bay-area-needs-to-organize-to-fight-sea-level-rise-says-spur-researcher#commentsEnvironmental policyGovernmentLand useBay AreaWinter 2014Bay Conservation and Development CommissionLaura TamPlan Bay AreaSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research Associationsea-level riseMon, 24 Mar 2014 21:36:11 +00001855 at http://sfpublicpress.orgAnnie SneedBay Area Carbon Dioxide Sensor Network Aims to Check Climate Change Policieshttp://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-10/bay-area-carbon-dioxide-sensor-network-aims-to-check-climate-change-policies
<p>Scientists have devised an intricate network of carbon dioxide sensors in the Bay Area that could offer objective measurements to evaluate which climate change initiatives are effective in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.</p>
<p>The sensors provide real-time local data on how much carbon dioxide is being emitted, said lead researcher Ronald Cohen, professor of chemistry and of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.</p>
<p>“What we hope the network will tell us is which of the many policies is working,” Cohen said. “It’ll tell us if cap-and-trade is the most effective thing we’re doing or electric cars is the most effective.”</p>
<p>Cap-and-trade, a component of California’s Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, uses various tools to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The program puts an overall limit on emissions produced by oil refineries, utility companies and other emitters. Industries participating in the program receive emission allowances — either the full amount for free, or a set percentage for free and the rest for purchase — that they can then sell on the market if they lower their emissions, creating an incentive for each business to reduce its carbon footprint.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The California Air Resources Board, the agency running the program, will hold the first auction for allowances on Nov. 14.</p>
<p>Cohen said his team expects to distinguish among different sources of carbon dioxide pollution, such as the fraction from cars versus that from home heating systems.</p>
<p>The measurements obtained from the network could potentially be used to guide climate-friendly policies, including the promotion of high-density housing near public transportation.</p>
<p>In addition to carbon dioxide, the sensors monitor nitrogen dioxide, ozone and carbon monoxide levels. Data from the sensors is available on the <a href="http://beacon.berkeley.edu/Sites.aspx">Berkeley Atmospheric CO2 Observation Network</a> project website.</p>
<p>Cohen said the project is unique because of the large number of sensors to be installed across the region.</p>
<p>So far only 10 sensors have been mounted, he said, but his team plans to put up a total of 40 in a network extending from El Cerrito to San Leandro. Most will be in Oakland. The sensors cost about $4,000 each and have been installed on rooftops of schools in Oakland with the goal of educating children about atmospheric science and measurements.</p>
<p>Cohen plans to install one at the Exploratorium in San Francisco when it moves to its new location at Pier 15.</p>
<p>The carbon dioxide sensor network is interesting to government officials because the gas has not yet been monitored locally.&nbsp;The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which regulates air pollution, does not itself monitor carbon dioxide, but tracks emissions of the gas from industry reports, officials at the agency said.</p>
<p>“Carbon dioxide is not technically an air pollutant,” said Eric Stevenson, director of technical services at the air district. “It doesn’t have a direct health impact, so it’s not part of our monitoring network, but we do want to have a picture, because it’s important in terms of climate change.”</p>
<p>The sensors may also prove to be a useful tool for environmental policy planners.</p>
<p>“Generally, we do not monitor air quality at this fine-grained of a scale,” said Laura Tam, sustainable development policy director at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. “It will be interesting to look at data from this network, once it is built out over time, to see how much variation there is at the city or sub-regional scale.”</p>
<p>Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Tam said the major impacts of climate change in the Bay Area would be a rising sea level and an increase in extreme weather patterns.</p>
<p>“We’ll see increased hot weather in San Francisco,” she said. “In fact, parts of San Francisco and Alameda counties — because we haven’t really constructed buildings and housing to deal with hot weather — are some of the most heat-vulnerable places in the entire United States.”</p>
http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-10/bay-area-carbon-dioxide-sensor-network-aims-to-check-climate-change-policies#commentsEnvironmental policyBay AreaBay Area Air Quality Management DistrictCalifornia Air Resources Boardcap-and-tradeclimate changegreenhouse gasesOaklandSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research AssociationU.C. BerkeleyMon, 22 Oct 2012 20:11:41 +00001458 at http://sfpublicpress.orgAmbika KandasamyCan San Francisco add 150,000 more people?http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-06/can-san-francisco-add-150000-more-people
<div><strong><em><span style="font-size:18px;">Land’s carrying capacity under stress as Bay Area expected to add 2 million</span></em></strong></div>
<div>&nbsp;</div>
<p>In&nbsp;1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote the best-seller “The Population Bomb,” warning of mass starvation in the face of uncontrolled human population growth. Taken as alarmist at the time, the book nevertheless started a debate about the world’s limited natural resources and the human race’s voracious appetite.</p>
<p class="p3">Of course, we didn’t all starve, thanks in part to advancements in agriculture. But more than 40 years later, with the doubling of the world’s population, we’re faced with a different doom-and-gloom scenario: climate change. Ehrlich, now a population studies expert at <a href="http://stanford.edu/">Stanford University</a>, hasn’t backed down. He says the government should actively discourage childbearing. “If you’re a patriotic American, you stop at two, and if you’re super-patriotic you stop at one,” he said.</p>
<p class="p3">That’s certainly not how most city planners, let alone Americans, are thinking. In places like <a href="http://sfgsa.org/index.aspx?page=1085">San Francisco City Hall</a>, officials enthusiastically embrace a pro-growth strategy to expand the city’s tax base, and create vibrant communities in blighted or underdeveloped areas. Most of that growth will come from new people moving into the city, since San Francisco has the smallest percentage of children of any major metropolitan center in the country — 13 percent.</p>
<p class="p3">But a larger population stretches resources, even in a dense, efficient metropolis. People create waste, and consume water, food and energy. They pollute the air with cars. And they encroach on the last vestiges of natural habitat.</p>
<p class="p3">Environmental resources begin to deteriorate when San Francisco’s natural ecosystems — and those of the larger Bay Area — reach their limit, or “carrying capacity.” The accepted regional projections over the next 25 years show the region increasing air pollution, exceeding water supplies, battling sea-level rise, and consuming more power — all due, in large part, to population increase.</p>
<p class="p3">“There’s not only a carrying capacity in terms of water and space,” said Tina Swanson of the <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/">Natural Resources Defense Council </a>and former executive director of the <a href="http://www.bay.org/">Bay Institute</a>, an environmental group focused on protecting the bay. “There’s also a quality-of-life carrying capacity. We don’t want to grow to a point where it isn’t a beautiful area, because then people won’t want to live here.”</p>
<p class="p3">Net growth in the city continues to rise, despite the shrinking average family size and the ups and downs of the economy.</p>
<p class="p3">The <a href="http://www.abag.ca.gov/">Association of Bay Area Governments</a> predicts San Francisco will reach 969,000 people by 2035 — a nearly 20 percent jump above today’s 815,400.</p>
<p class="p3">The Bay Area, now nearly 7.2 million, would reach 9.3 million people by 2040 under that growth scenario. That amounts to 2.1 million more people at a growth rate of nearly 30 percent.</p>
<p class="p3">A <a href="http://www.dof.ca.gov/">California Department of Finance</a> report in early May found that the Bay Area is the state’s fastest-growing region, thanks to the booming tech economy in Silicon Valley.</p>
<p class="p3">As the Bay Area struggles to meet sustainability goals, double-digit population growth presents a clear challenge to reducing the region’s ecological footprint. Residents must use resources more efficiently to counteract the addition of more than a million new residents. In many ways, it mirrors a challenge the planet is facing. Can population growth in San Francisco and the Bay Area be sustainable?</p>
<p class="p3">Planners argue that sustainable growth can be achieved if new development is funneled to the right places. Indeed, they say that the urban core — notably San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and any other cities along <a href="http://www.bart.gov/">BART</a> or other rapid-transit lines — are the ideal places to put new people. They need fewer cars and the basic infrastructure is already in place.</p>
<p class="p3"><a href="http://www.onebayarea.org/plan_bay_area/">Plan Bay Area</a>, the growth blueprint approved in May by regional agencies, calls for San Francisco to create 92,410 new housing units by 2040 — 14 percent of all the new housing in the region. That’s a 29 percent increase over the city’s current housing numbers. If they are coming, the hope is, they might as well be coming to San Francisco.</p>
<p class="p3">But some environmentalists say population growth will inevitably deepen the effect on a local ecosystem. The region’s vulnerability to earthquakes and sea-level rise only heighten the economic and safety risk to those living along the coastlines and seismically weak ground.</p>
<p class="p3">“We may not want to face up to this, but the truth is we’re going to grow, because the human population is growing and the economy is growing,” said Richard Walker, a geographer at the <a href="http://berkeley.edu/">University of California, Berkeley</a>. “Then there’s the much larger question of why do we have to grow so much? The system we live in demands endless growth, and in that sense we’re trapped.”</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: center; "><span class="s1"><b>GROWING PAINS</b></span></p>
<p class="p3">San Francisco has dealt with a sudden population explosion before. In 1848, the Gold Rush turned a small Pacific outpost with fewer than 1,000 residents into a boomtown of 40,000 in just over a year, putting San Francisco on the map as a major commercial hub.</p>
<p class="p4">After World War II, returning servicemen in search&nbsp;of shipyard jobs brought their families to the city, leading to a housing boom that developed the sand dunes west of Twin Peaks. During the 1940s, the city grew more than 20 percent.</p>
<p class="p1">The new people and their industry left a deep footprint on the San Francisco Bay: Imported sand and moored ships created new land and a waterfront on top of mudflats. Sediment from gold mining destroyed wetlands, while toxic contaminants from mining and other industries polluted the waters. Invasive species were unleashed and changed the bay ecosystem.</p>
<p class="p1">These days San Francisco’s population growth is attributed to some of the same underlying causes. People migrate here internationally and from other parts of the country in search of jobs because the Bay Area is a desirable place to live. The city isn’t just passively letting them come — it has adopted a pro-growth strategy to strengthen its economic competitiveness with other cities. That strategy includes accommodating more people by increasing housing. That said, San Francisco has precious little open land, so new development opportunities are limited.</p>
<p class="p1">Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist, said adding housing, particularly affordable housing, is wrapped up in the city’s strategy and its attempt to stabilize an unstable tax base. A tight housing market drives up wage inflation, he explained, without putting the cash in the pockets of the workers who are paying high rents.</p>
<p class="p1">“The money goes to those who they bought the house from, or to landlords,” he said. “To the extent that the city expands the housing supply, it will reduce housing prices in San Francisco. That’s the goal of the strategy.”</p>
<p class="p3" style="text-align: center; "><span class="s1"><b>BUILDING BOOM</b></span></p>
<p class="p5">Guided by the city’s encouragement and direction, massive new housing redevelopment projects will be popping up on Treasure Island, Hunters Point Shipyard and Parkmerced over the next decade. Nearly 750 other projects, mostly residential or with a residential component, are in the planning and construction phases. They are expected to add almost 43,000 new housing units, according to the city’s <a href="http://www.sf-planning.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=8742">2012 Pipeline Report</a>.</p>
<p class="p1">At the same time, San Francisco is trying to realize another goal: to become the “greenest city in America.” To that end, it adopted a “zero waste” policy to send virtually nothing to the landfill. Its climate action plan would reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. City agencies are increasing water and energy efficiency and are encouraging bicycling and walking.</p>
<p class="p1">To city officials, high growth and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. In a 2010 interview, Jack Sylvan, then director of the Treasure Island <a href="http://sftreasureisland.org/index.aspx?page=6">redevelopment project</a> under Mayor Gavin Newsom, reacted strongly to questions about the sustainability of adding more than 7,000 people to the man-made Treasure Island, constructed on bay shallows landfill. The Treasure Island plans call for remaking the former military base into a high-density “eco-city” with high-rises clustered near a high-speed ferry terminal.</p>
<p class="p1">“The notion that this is going to happen somewhere else that’s better, I think, is fundamentally flawed,” Sylvan said. “You’re talking about fringe people who think that a back-to-the-land movement is our solution to an environmentally sustainable built environment.”</p>
<p class="p3" style="text-align: center; "><span class="s1"><b>BIG FOOTPRINT</b></span></p>
<p class="p5">Yet some environmentalists see the city’s pro-growth agenda as anything but sustainable. The debate centers on “smart growth,” an urban planning concept that advocates building high-density neighborhoods, preferably in the urban core, and getting people out of cars to use public transit and start walking and bicycling.</p>
<p class="p1">Smart growth is seldom challenged, especially in the Bay Area, since it represents a progressive change in planning from the massive suburban sprawl of previous decades. But in certain environmental circles, smart growth is quietly criticized for ignoring population growth’s destructive effect on nature. Critics say smart growth will reduce the damage, but cannot erase it entirely.</p>
<p class="p1">“The notion of smart growth is an oxymoron,” said Dick Schneider, an activist in the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club since the 1970s. “San Francisco is already unsustainable, so further growth is only going to imbalance the situation even further.”</p>
<p class="p1">A 2005 white paper, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/MKThink%20Strategy/d/21066529-Unsustainable-City-Density-Transportation-and-San-Francisco-s-Sustainability">“Unsustainable City,” </a>produced by local planning and design firm <a href="http://www.mkthink.com/">MKThink</a>, reasoned that San Francisco had an ecological footprint of 18 acres per person. That means 18 acres of land are needed to sustain the basic consumptive needs of an average city resident. Compared with the Bay Area’s 20.9 acres and the U.S. average of 23.6 acres, San Francisco doesn’t look so bad. The footprint analysis was based on a 2004 study by the Oakland-based think tank Redefining Progress.</p>
<p class="p1">MKThink takes San Francisco to task for not being “smart growth” enough in its housing density and independence from cars.</p>
<p class="p1">Schneider has a different reaction. Multiply 18 acres by the city’s population and that’s far greater than the size of San Francisco.</p>
<p class="p1">“That’s over 15 million acres of land and water to support the current population of San Francisco,” he said. “San Francisco’s acreage is about 150,000. So clearly, the San Francisco population is living beyond its means and is therefore unsustainable by any reasonable interpretation of the word.”&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p3" style="text-align: center; "><span class="s1"><b>IS GROWTH INEVITABLE?</b></span></p>
<p class="p5">Smart-growth advocates counter that halting population expansion isn’t a path to sustainability.</p>
<p class="p1">“If you look at Northern California, and if we care about issues like climate change and the environment, in fact, the best place to live is the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Egon Terplan, the regional planning director for the<a href="http://www.spur.org/"> San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association</a>.</p>
<p class="p1">Terplan said San Francisco’s temperate climate requires less power for air conditioning and heating, while the city’s residents have a smaller environmental effect than those in outlying areas.</p>
<p class="p1">“What’s your feeling about the environmental impact that’s going to happen in the Central Valley and in Northern Sonoma County?” Terplan asked. “If the growth doesn’t come here, it’s going to be happening in other places. You can’t look at it in isolation.”</p>
<p class="p1">But is it San Francisco’s responsibility to solve the Bay Area’s sustainability problems? When considering sustainability, should improving local conditions take precedence?</p>
<p class="p1">“Every time I hear it’s going to grow this much, I want to challenge the premise,” said&nbsp; Swanson of the Bay Institute. “The idea that we have to grow, when in fact natural resources may be limited and we have additional impacts … I think should be reevaluated.”</p>
<p class="p1">Regional smart-growth planning does sometimes work, said Sam Adams, the mayor of Portland, Ore., one of the best-planned cities in the country.</p>
<p class="p1">“Portland’s last city plan, developed over 30 years ago, focused on limiting sprawl, urban renewal, light rail (instead of highways), and helping to inspire new business sectors, including cleantech,” he wrote in an essay on <a href="http://grist.org/">Grist.org</a>, an environmental news website. “As a result, we have lowered total carbon emissions 6 percent while the rest of the U.S. has increased by more than 10 percent. And we’ve done it while growing our population and jobs.”</p>
<p class="p3" style="text-align: center; "><span class="s1"><b>OPTIMISTIC VISION</b></span></p>
<p class="p5">In the face of constant environmental pressures in the Bay Area, the smart-growth movement is sounding optimistic, the criticism about its blind spots notwithstanding. A shrinking region is a worse outcome, said Jeremy Madsen, executive director of the <a href="http://www.greenbelt.org/">Greenbelt Alliance,</a> a San Francisco-based anti-sprawl advocacy group.</p>
<p class="p1">“If you look at the alternatives, we could end up like Cleveland or Detroit,” Madsen said. “We’d rather be what we are.”&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p1">Madsen said growth can spur innovative planning and infrastructure investment. That is happening in Oakland and San Jose, where strip malls and auto body shops — not high on any sustainability index — are being torn down and replaced with high-density housing and businesses.</p>
<p class="p1">“If it’s done right, you use development as a tool to develop,” Madsen said.</p>
<p class="p1">Greenbelt Alliance mapped out the underdeveloped land within the Bay Area’s urban footprint and found that as many as 800,000 new homes, virtually all the new growth in the next 25 years, could be accommodated without treading onto open space.</p>
<p class="p1">Perhaps the most hopeful note for environmentalists is the Bay Area’s historical success in digging out of environmental crisis while growing: the campaign to save San Francisco Bay.&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p1">“The bay was a cesspool when I was a kid,” said Walker, the Berkeley geography professor. “There was no fishing to speak of in the bay, so some things are better. The sea otters and seals have made a comeback after being nearly extinct. There’s so much parkland that wasn’t there.”</p>
<p class="p1">Walker said “utopian goals” are sometimes achievable, with diligence, as the population booms: “You wouldn’t believe the changes that have been made even in my lifetime. The bay is so much more livable in so many ways, despite tripling in size.”</p>
http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-06/can-san-francisco-add-150000-more-people#commentsDemographicsInfrastructureSan FranciscoBay AreaBay Area Smart GrowthSummer 2012Association of Bay Area GovernmentsBay InstituteGreenbelt AllianceGristMKThinkNatural Resources Defense CouncilPlan Bay AreaSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research AssociationStanfordThe Population BombUnsustainable CityTue, 19 Jun 2012 18:55:37 +00001361 at http://sfpublicpress.orgAlison HawkesWhy smart growth?http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-06/why-smart-growth
<p>Sprawl is commonplace in the Bay Area — from places like Antioch and Brentwood on the outskirts of Contra Costa County to parts of Santa Clara and Sonoma counties.&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2">The pattern emerges from an all-too-familiar suburban formula that for decades earned developers high profits: perfectly manicured lawns, streets that meander around small neighborhood parks and cul-de-sacs at the end of nearly every block. Mixed use is forbidden — businesses are clustered into shopping malls a car trip away.</p>
<p class="p2">Though the Bay Area started out on a European-style city grid in the era of the horse and buggy, the neighborhoods developed after World War II, after the rise of the automobile industry and interstate highway system, became the American dream.</p>
<p class="p2">Mainstream thinking has changed radically. Planners now say that 20th century pattern is the opposite of what the Bay Area needs to remain an attractive place to live and work.</p>
<p class="p2">“Think about it — the most desirable places in the Bay Area now were built before World War II, before the automobile, places like Rockridge in Oakland and downtown San Francisco,” said Egon Terplan, planning director at the <a href="http://www.spur.org/">San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association</a>.</p>
<p class="p2">“The question becomes: Are you going to live in a community where you can walk around and get some stuff for your daily life in your neighborhood?” Terplan said. “Can you hop on a bus or hop on a train and get to your job or get to a medical appointment or get to school?”</p>
<p class="p2"><a href="http://www.onebayarea.org/plan_bay_area/">Plan Bay Area</a> attempts to increase urban density in cities throughout the region by establishing “priority development areas.”&nbsp; Cities can concentrate “infill” development on vacant or under-used city lots in neighborhoods well served by transit. The idea is to zone roughly 80 percent of the region’s new housing in new or existing downtowns.</p>
<p class="p2">The grand statewide goal, through two state laws, <a href="http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/ab32/ab32.htm">Assembly Bill 32</a> and <a href="http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/sb375/sb375.htm">Senate Bill 375</a>, is to develop regional greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for motorists by building enough housing for people at all income levels and concentrating new housing and jobs near transportation hubs, allowing residents to live closer to where they work, thus shortening their driving time.</p>
<p class="p2">One organization that has argued for years for such a strategy, the San Francisco-based <a href="http://www.greenbelt.org/">Greenbelt Alliance</a>, says the need for more housing is urgent: “If new development continues to sprawl outward on the urban edge, it will drain resources from existing cities and create longer commutes, more traffic and more climate-changing greenhouse gases. … This kind of development will not meet the need for more affordable homes closer to jobs."</p>
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http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-06/why-smart-growth#commentsHousingLand useInfrastructureLocal historySan FranciscoSpecial ReportsBay Area Smart GrowthSpring 2012Greenbelt AlliancePlan Bay AreaSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research AssociationSF Public PressFri, 15 Jun 2012 00:26:27 +00001373 at http://sfpublicpress.orgAngela HartTwo business tax plans aim to encourage new jobs in SF http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2010-05/two-business-tax-plans-aim-to-encourage-new-jobs-in-sf
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>In an effort to increase revenue and spur the local economy, San Francisco&rsquo;s Office of the Controller is proposing two revised business tax plans that may end up on the November ballot.</p>
<p>The current system is a tax on employee payroll. It would be replaced by a tax on commercial real estate combined with either a less extractive payroll tax or a tax on all income. Ted Egan, the chief economist for the city and county of San Francisco, described the two proposals Tuesday at an event sponsored by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Some businesses may pay more in rent and tax than they would in tax by themselves, but certainly [currently taxed employers&rsquo;] taxes should go down,&rdquo; Egan said.</p>
<p>Any new business taxes would have to be approved by more than 50 percent of San Francisco voters in November. Whether one or both of his proposals ends up on the ballot will be a political matter that is out of his hands, Egan said. Only the Board of Supervisors, the mayor or a citizen petition can put legislation on the ballot.</p>
<p>Egan said the current system &mdash; a 1.5 percent payroll tax that applies to only 6,000 of the city&rsquo;s 80,000 businesses &mdash; is not an equitable system. Nor is it a stable one: Payroll is subject to great fluctuation, meaning the city&rsquo;s tax base is highly volatile, Egan said.</p>
<p>Supervisor David Chiu has discussed these problems with Mayor Gavin Newsom and members of the chamber of commerce over the past year and eventually tasked the Office of the Controller with finding a better system, said Rob Black, vice president of Public Policy at the Chamber of Commerce.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Typically, you tax things you don&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;We in San Francisco actually tax jobs, which we do like and we want to create more of.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Both of the proposals encourage new job creation by decreasing the payroll tax for major employers, Egan said.</p>
<p>The first proposal, a reduced payroll tax system, would apply to all businesses with employees. It would allow all businesses, regardless of size, to deduct the first $250,000 in payroll. For any additional payroll, businesses would pay a tax of 1.2 percent on the payroll of employees earning less than $85,000 annually and a tax of 1.5 percent for employees earning $85,000 or more. The average employee in San Francisco earns $85,000 a year, Egan said.</p>
<p>By allowing all businesses the $250,000 tax break, the cost of hiring for employers subject to the current business tax will decrease, encouraging them to increase hiring, Egan said.</p>
<p>Egan estimates that this proposal will create an average of 690 jobs per year for the next 20 years and help San Francisco&rsquo;s economy grow by $108 million in that same period.</p>
<p>Egan&rsquo;s second proposal would eliminate the payroll tax. Instead, the city would tax all businesses&rsquo; gross receipts, or their total income, by different amounts according to each sector&rsquo;s anticipated costs of doing business. For example, although a grocery store and a law firm may have equal incomes, grocery stores would be taxed at a lower rate because of they have relatively higher business expenses.</p>
<p>By completely eliminating the payroll tax, this gross receipts tax system would create an average of 4,520 jobs per year for the next 20 years and help San Francisco&rsquo;s economy grow by $613 million in that same period, Egan said.</p>
<p>The gross receipts proposal would bring more jobs and economic growth because payroll would grow faster than gross receipts, Egan explained.</p>
<p>Employers &ldquo;are going to be paying less under the gross receipts tax than they would have under the payroll, so effectively, that&rsquo;s a tax cut and that stimulates the economy an additional amount,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p>To make up for the revenue lost by decreasing the payroll tax, both proposals include a commercial real estate tax of 1.395 percent. The payroll proposal would bring the city $18 million more in annual revenue than the current system, while the gross receipts proposal would increase city revenue by $21 million, Egan said. The current payroll tax revenue is around $350 million.</p>
<p>The cost of the real estate tax would likely be passed on from building owners to tenants, he said. (Most commercial landlords write clauses into their leases that pass new taxes through to existing tenants.) This way, even banking and the financial sector, which are exempted from payroll taxes under state law, would contribute to the tax base because they occupy significant office space in San Francisco. With rents increasing across the board, nonprofits and government agencies renting from commercial landlords also would indirectly feed the revenue stream.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Anyone who rents commercial real estate will contribute,&rdquo; Egan said.</p>
<p>Some members of the business community, however, are concerned that this additional tax would hurt the economy by increasing rents.</p>
<p>&ldquo;One thing to recognize is that any tax, whether large or small, is generally passed on to the tenants,&rdquo; said John Bozeman, the legislative assistant for Building Owners and Managers Association San Francisco. &ldquo;It comes down to the tenant in the end and the consumer they&rsquo;re trying to service. So it does disservice to everyone.&rdquo;</p>
<p>One audience member at Egan&rsquo;s talk on Tuesday speculated that by encouraging job creation while taxing real estate, the city might influence businesses to squeeze more employees into smaller spaces.</p>
<p>Black said that San Francisco government is trying to create an image as a business-friendly city, and that these new proposals are part of that effort. Most recently, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance Tuesday to extend an existing payroll tax exemption to benefit more biotechnology businesses.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Where the city is trying to do things to revise the tax code to be business-friendly, that perception permeates and convinces businesses to move here,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;It allows us to say &lsquo;You&rsquo;re welcome. We want you. And we&rsquo;re working with you even though it&rsquo;s not a lot of money.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
<p><i>Egan's two proposals will be available online Friday at www.sfcontroller.org.</i></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2010-05/two-business-tax-plans-aim-to-encourage-new-jobs-in-sf#commentsBudgetSan Franciscobusiness taxchamber of commerceOffice of the ControllerRob BlackSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research AssociationSupervisor David ChiuTed EganThu, 06 May 2010 00:33:03 +0000569 at http://sfpublicpress.orgDana Sherne